Algeria Quotes

“The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees.

But in the case of Israel, the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace.

Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.”
― Eric Hoffer

“The people come to understand that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the result of organised, protected robbery. Rich people are no longer respectable people; they are nothing more than flesh eating animals, jackals and vultures which wallow in the people's blood.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“حبُّ الوطنِ شُعورٌ رَاسخٌ في النفسْ،
لا يشوبُهُ عكرٌ أو دنسْ،
هو شيئٌ من ذَاتي، وجزءٌ من حَياتي،
وسيظلُّ حاضِرا في كتابَتي، في غُرْبتي، حتى مَمَاتي.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“Since they weren't sleepy and nothing had been left unsaid, they began to read poetry to each other, taking turns like children and enjoying it. Bachir had a lovely voice, one that was already that of a man. He knew many poems by heart. He lovingly recited Victor Hugo, with warmth Rimbaud's Le bateau ivre, and poems written by young people going into battle; he then moved on to the poets of liberty - Rimbaud again, Eluard, and Desnos.”
― Assia Djebar, Children of the New World

“You could read a dozen large tomes on the history of Islam from its very beginnings and you still wouldn't understand what is going on in Algeria. But read 30 pages on colonialism and decolonisation and then you'll understand quite a lot.”
― Amin Maalouf, In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

“You think about bathing in the sea – thick as velvet, supple and smooth as a wild animal. You think about swimming naked, and at night, with the stars, and a friend. Swim till you’re far from the world, and breathing together in the same rhythm, and free of absolutely everything.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly:" In reality, who am I? "The defensive attitudes created by this violent bringing together of the colonised man and the colonial system form themselves into a structures which then reveals the colonised personality. This 'sensitivity' is easily understood if we simply study and are alive to the number and depth of the injuries inflicted upon a native during a single day spent amidst the colonial regime. It must in any case be remembered that a colonised people is not only simply a dominated people. Under the German occupation the French remained men; under the French occupation, the Germans remained men. In Algeria there is not simply the domination but the decision to the letter not to occupy anything more than the sum total of the land.”
― Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

“Mad, you must see me mad; your opinion is awash to me as long as I am crazed by love. I welcome this folly that you give to me with great estate. Thief? Rascal? I did what others did and what others had me do and we are all doomed, but I do not regret for one instant the coming of events of this most splendid night. You should have seen how carefully I proceeded and how I found love in the most dreadful of streets, during my most mourning of states and on the most propitious of nights. Play samartian to the fool, champion to the underdog. So to speak, I am a hubris acolyte of love.”
― Benarrioua Aniss, Sons of Algiers

“My oral tradition has gradually been overlaid and is in danger of vanishing: at the age of eleven or twelve I was abruptly ejected from this theatre of feminine confidences - was I thereby spared from having to silence my humbled pride? In writing of my childhood memories I am taken back to those bodies bereft of voices. To attempt an autobiography using French words alone is to lend oneself to the vivisector's scalpel, revealing what lies beneath the skin. The flesh flakes off and with it, seemingly, the last shreds of the unwritten language of my childhood. Wounds arc reopened, veins weep, one's own blood flows and that of others, which has never dried. As the words pour out, inexhaustible, maybe distorting, our ancestral night lengthens. Conceal the body and its ephemeral grace. Prohibit gestures - they arc too specific. Only let sounds remain.

Speaking of oneself in a language other than that of the elders is indeed to unveil oneself, not only to emerge from childhood but to leave it, never to return. Such incidental unveiling is tantamount to stripping oneself naked, as the demotic Arabic dialect emphasizes. But this stripping naked, when expressed in the language of the former conquerer (who for more than a century could lay his hands on everything save women's bodies), this stripping naked takes us back oddly enough to the plundering of the preceding century. When the body is not embalmed by ritual lamentations, it is like a scarecrow decked in rags and tatters. The battle-cries of our ancestors, unhorsed in long-forgotten combats, re-echo across the years; accompanied by the dirges of the mourning-women who watched them die.”
― Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade

“Bouteflika: Your position was one of principle, it was very clear. Your press—Newsweek, the New York Times—were very objective on the problem. And we find that the U.S. could have stopped the Green March. The U.S. could have stopped it, or favored it.

Kissinger: That’s not true.

Bouteflika: We think on the contrary that France played a crude role. There was no delicacy, no subtlety. Bourguiba, Senghor—they tried to use what influence remained for France. Bongo. No finesse, no research.
I don’t know if this corresponds to your situation. But there are sentiments, and we were very affected because we thought it was an anti-Algerian position.

Kissinger: We don’t have an anti-Algerian position. The only question was how much to invest. To prevent the Green March would have meant hurting our relations completely with Morocco, in effect an embargo.

Bouteflika: You could have done it. You could stop economic aid and military aid.

Kissinger: But that would have meant ruining our relations with Morocco completely.

Bouteflika: No. The King of Morocco would not have gone to the Soviets.

Kissinger: But we don’t have that much interest in the Sahara.

Bouteflika: But you have interests in Spain, and in Morocco.

Kissinger: And in Algeria.

Bouteflika: And you favored one.

[FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1969-1976, VOLUME E-9, PART 1, DOCUMENTS ON NORTH AFRICA, 1973-1976
110. Memorandum of Conversation - Paris, December 17, 1975, 8:05–9:25 a.m.]”
― Henry Kissinger

“Peace wins over wealth.”
― Algerian Proverb

“This is the way the region was, cruel to live in, even without men--who didn't help matters either. But Daru had been born here. Everywhere else, he felt exiled.”
― Camus Albert

“Stones, similar to the black stone of the Ka'ba, were worshiped by Arabs in most parts and by the Semitic races generally. The Kabyles of Kabylia in Northern Algeria say their first Great Mother goddess was turned to stone. Other names of the goddess are Kububa, Kuba, Kube and the Latin Cybele. Other scholars say that this meteorite was brought to Makkah by the Sabeans or the Ethiopians and state that the goddess who dwelt in the sacred black stone was given the title Shayba (see Beni Shaybah - the Sons of the Old Woman, above) who represented the Moon in its threefold existence - wa xing, (maiden), full (pregnant mother) and waning (old wise woman). Although the word Ka'ba itself means 'cube', it is very close to the word ku'b meaning 'woman's breast.”
― Laurence Galian, Jesus, Muhammad and the Goddess

“Codolyc 30 mg
And the cops come out of the woodwork
We hide in the holes we call home
Catch us if you can
And I hear la voix de ville humming in my head
And I see the sirens of the seven villes moving ahead
To come and greet the connoisseur of paths
Me I say « Bravo» and «Long live death»”
― Benarrioua Aniss, Sins of Algiers

“Raise my astral body to the space
And may the angels take me to higher plains
To the density where poets are gods,
Where my poems won’t be in vain
Look at the cities from up high
And see how bright Algiers can shine;
To tell myself that, you, where you are,
You are the most sparkling light.”
― Benarrioua Aniss, Sins of Algiers

“Now I give this rascal weight from off my head
The pride of a streetborn artist from off my chest
With my own hands I renounce my earthly claims
With my own sins I ink this very book
In this vaudevillian theater we’ve all had our plays
Of wisdom, folly, love songs and lamentations of twin flames”
― Benarrioua Aniss, Sins of Algiers

“Now I bid tender night to the dormant martyrs below
To the one thousand and one night, to the angry shining stars above
To the vaudevillian theatre, to the troubadours and mendiants within
To us personas of a forgetten tragedy and long acts playing without
To you Mother Algiers”
― Benarrioua Aniss, Sins of Algiers

“In view of our still bleeding past, and of our ever-threatening future, union is our great need. Union is also, let me tell you, the foremost wish of the Church and of all its pastors of every degree. The Church does not ask us to either give up the remembrance of past glories or the sentiments of fidelity and gratitude that are an honour to every man. But when the will of a people has been definitely expressed, when the form of government, as Leo XIII recently stated, is in no way contrary to the principles on which alone civilized and Christian nations can exist, when the unreserved acceptance of this form of government is necessary to preserve a people from danger, the time has come to declare the ordeal over, to end our dissensions, and to sacrifice all that conscience and honour allow us to sacrifice for the safety of our country. Without this patriotic acceptance of the situation nothing can avail either to maintain peace and order, to save the world from the social danger, or to preserve even the religion of which we are the ministers. It would be folly to attempt to support the columns of an edifice without going inside it, if only to prevent those who would destroy everything from accomplishing their mad design. It would be still greater folly to attack the building from without, as some are even now doing, in spite of recent scandals: disclosing our ambitions and hatreds to observant enemies, and instilling into the heart of France the discouragement that precedes the final catastrophe.”
― Charles Lavigerie